NFL CMO Tim Ellis on Football’s Campaign to Bring in More Fans: ‘You Have to Be Willing to Not Please Everyone’
Tim Ellis is the CMO for the force behind America’s annual marketing Olympics: the Super Bowl.
The NFL’s executive VP and chief marketing officer is heading toward the summit of the league’s season as the Seattle Seahawks take on the New England Patriots at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif. The NFL heads in to Super Bowl LX with the NFL on a regular-season roll: viewership for regular-season games climbed an average of 10% in the 2025 season.
Ellis joined the National Football League from video game giant Activision in 2018. 2026 marks a high watermark for what he calls the “helmets off” strategy of highlighting football’s superstar players as well as showcasing its ever-changing roster of new recruits and rising stars. The rebound of the past 10 years follows a rough period for the league with players embroiled in criminal headlines and the league’s tone-deaf response to Colin Kaepernick’s civil rights protests.
“We’ve never had a bigger fan base,” Ellis told Variety.
Here, Ellis explains how and why pro football made a conscious effort to widen its all-American tent to include women, people of color, casual fans and international viewers — and make the sport more valuable to marketers. He addresses why the league was eager to recruit Bad Bunny for the Halftime Show, and why the NFL has stood by Puerto Rican superstar despite pushback from some quarters.
What in your view accounts for the big viewership gains this past season?
It is a combination of an excellent product, meaning the quality of the game has never been better or more exciting, as well as us over the last several years working hard to expand our audience And to connect our brand with modern youth culture. So I think, as it relates to the game itself the closeness of the competition, the fantastic finishes, the riveting comebacks, all of these have just thrilled audiences the entire season. Some facts which are just kind of mind blowing. Seventy-three games were decided by three points or fewer season. Sixty-two games there was a winning score in the final two minutes. And then if you look at the competitive balance, it really led to unpredictability. And in the sports world, that’s actually a good thing. It fuels excitement.
There were three teams that won their division titles after finishing last the year before in their division. So if you’re a fan, that just gives you that knowledge and that excitement and that anticipation that anything can happen.
What made the NFL want to invest in broadening its fanbase from the hardcore football lover? Why were you recruited in 2018 from Activision?
We’ve never had a bigger fan base. We now have over 200 million fans in this country — three-fourths of the country are fans of the NFL. My mission here was to restore how the league shows up in the world. You know, obviously, particularly in the U.S., but increasingly so in the rest of the world. My mantra was how do we open our arms wider to bring more people into the NFL, and how do we make the NFL more human, more inclusive and more deeply connected to the fans? So I created a strategy called the “helmets off” strategy, which was really to get the helmets off the players, to humanize the players and to lean into their passions, and really show a more open, more accessible, more compassionate face to the league. That’s helped us not only appeal to a lot of more casual audiences, girls and women, people of color, LGBTQ. That really helped us connect with those audiences and bring them in.
Was this initiative a hard sell to league officials and team owners?
I just sort of laid out a plan. This is how we need to move forward. We need to reduce the tension that fans can feel right amongst the sort of the league and the players. And we need to just focus on the on our roots, where the values are the NFL, and begin to modernize right? So on the one hand, we’re going to put the players in the forefront and have them be the face of the League, which again humanizes the league, but it also gave us a chance to feature in a very emotional way the things that these players really cared about, right? And it allowed them to be very vulnerable and open and connect with people in a very different way.
To connect with with Gen Z, we focused on the things that the players loved around entertainment, like music, fashion and gaming. You may have noticed that we now, for example, we’re the only sports league that has a fashion editor, Kyle Smith, and he’s part of our marketing team. We brought that in. We have a lot of things that we’re doing to build that up. We have deep connections with all of our gaming partners, and then also a lot of the biggest creators in the world around gaming. We partner with them and bring them in. It took us years to really develop those partnerships and to earn the trust of these folks who really help us exponentially connect with fans in the US and around the world. Two of the biggest ones, IShowSpeed who has over 100 million followers, and then MrBeast — he’s massive now. We partnered with him early on. He had his first Super Bowl commercial with the NFL as an example. This year, our first game was streamed out of Brazil, and [MrBeast] was in charge of the NFL for a day in Brazil that first game this year. So we did lots of things with him and with some others, and we were earned their trust. We earned their partnership, and that’s really helped us see the world in a very different way. It’s helped us connect and build relationships and connect with our youth and important casual audiences.
A number of people have pointed out the flag football effect too, as the gentler form of football opens up youth competition to a wider range of players. Is that true in your experience?
We care about participation, and we want to make sure that we position flag as a legitimate sport. Then there’s no question about whether football was safe enough for young people to play because we’re offering not only tackle, but flag football as well. We really worked hard with the 32 teams to get flag football sanctioned as a girl’s varsity sport in high schools across the country, and we made significant progress in just a few short years. And now, with the NCAA now embracing flag football, we’re going to work and together to build a pro league with partners, and then ultimately the Olympics in ’28. These are really monumental shifts in the way that we think about football and football youth development, and it’s really helping us make the game more fun and interesting to a whole new fan base.
Now that it’s been a few years, what is the net gain for the NFL from the Taylor Swift effect? Your female viewership was already rising, but Swift’s influence must’ve been like rocket fuel?
She was particularly powerful and impactful with our very important segment of the 12-to-24 year old girls and women. That represents about 8% of our fan base, and a very important part of our fan base, because of course, they represent the future. And she grew that segment about 30% first year. So 8% of our fan base, she grew that 30%. I think she provided so many young women the opportunity to come in and feel comfortable wanting to be there and enjoying the game in a really authentic way.
How else are you trying to reach Gen Z and beyond?
It’s a natural extension of what we had already been doing for years with our influencers and creators. And those influencers and creators include some sports stars like Simone Biles, right? We’ve even brought them into our marketing group, and they were photographers on the sidelines. I know if you saw that, but Simone, Simone and Suni Lee were actually photographers for a game for our marketing group. So they get all this inside access work on the sidelines.
And then you’ve got Olivia Culpo who’s a very influential person. She’s the wife of [San Francisco 49ers player] Christian McCaffrey. And then Hailee Steinfeld [wife of Buffalo Bills’ quarterback Josh Allen], and [former NFL star] Jason Kelce’s wife, Kylie, so we really lifted up and partnered with not just the players themselves and some of these influencers and creators, but also some of the influencers and creators who were either wives or girlfriends of the players who really had a passion for the game and wanted to express themselves.
Bad Bunny just won the big prize of the night at Grammy Awards. What do you hope for out of the Halftime Show this year?
Bringing in Bad Bunny this year is already having a huge impact on a very important audience, both in the U.S. and internationally. And then the impact that we had with Kendrick Lamar last year in terms of video views and interest and engagement, far beyond the game itself, throughout the world. I’ve been in London doing deep research on insights on how to continue to position the NFL internationally, and they all talked about Kendrick Lamar and Bad Bunny, and the impact that some of these decisions have made. You have to be willing to not please everyone. There’s always going to be a segment of your fan base that is not 100% happy with some of your choices, but you have to be willing to take the risk, if you will, and to also believe in what it takes to grow your fan base and to grow the image of the NFL with very important young audiences. And what we’re finding is that some of our more mature audiences, that they actually love it, right? They start to sort of like get excited about as well, because it just makes the whole league and the image of the league feel more youthful and more energetic and more fun.
The NFL’s executive VP and chief marketing officer is heading toward the summit of the league’s season as the Seattle Seahawks take on the New England Patriots at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif. The NFL heads in to Super Bowl LX with the NFL on a regular-season roll: viewership for regular-season games climbed an average of 10% in the 2025 season.
Ellis joined the National Football League from video game giant Activision in 2018. 2026 marks a high watermark for what he calls the “helmets off” strategy of highlighting football’s superstar players as well as showcasing its ever-changing roster of new recruits and rising stars. The rebound of the past 10 years follows a rough period for the league with players embroiled in criminal headlines and the league’s tone-deaf response to Colin Kaepernick’s civil rights protests.
“We’ve never had a bigger fan base,” Ellis told Variety.
Here, Ellis explains how and why pro football made a conscious effort to widen its all-American tent to include women, people of color, casual fans and international viewers — and make the sport more valuable to marketers. He addresses why the league was eager to recruit Bad Bunny for the Halftime Show, and why the NFL has stood by Puerto Rican superstar despite pushback from some quarters.
What in your view accounts for the big viewership gains this past season?
It is a combination of an excellent product, meaning the quality of the game has never been better or more exciting, as well as us over the last several years working hard to expand our audience And to connect our brand with modern youth culture. So I think, as it relates to the game itself the closeness of the competition, the fantastic finishes, the riveting comebacks, all of these have just thrilled audiences the entire season. Some facts which are just kind of mind blowing. Seventy-three games were decided by three points or fewer season. Sixty-two games there was a winning score in the final two minutes. And then if you look at the competitive balance, it really led to unpredictability. And in the sports world, that’s actually a good thing. It fuels excitement.
There were three teams that won their division titles after finishing last the year before in their division. So if you’re a fan, that just gives you that knowledge and that excitement and that anticipation that anything can happen.
What made the NFL want to invest in broadening its fanbase from the hardcore football lover? Why were you recruited in 2018 from Activision?
We’ve never had a bigger fan base. We now have over 200 million fans in this country — three-fourths of the country are fans of the NFL. My mission here was to restore how the league shows up in the world. You know, obviously, particularly in the U.S., but increasingly so in the rest of the world. My mantra was how do we open our arms wider to bring more people into the NFL, and how do we make the NFL more human, more inclusive and more deeply connected to the fans? So I created a strategy called the “helmets off” strategy, which was really to get the helmets off the players, to humanize the players and to lean into their passions, and really show a more open, more accessible, more compassionate face to the league. That’s helped us not only appeal to a lot of more casual audiences, girls and women, people of color, LGBTQ. That really helped us connect with those audiences and bring them in.
Was this initiative a hard sell to league officials and team owners?
I just sort of laid out a plan. This is how we need to move forward. We need to reduce the tension that fans can feel right amongst the sort of the league and the players. And we need to just focus on the on our roots, where the values are the NFL, and begin to modernize right? So on the one hand, we’re going to put the players in the forefront and have them be the face of the League, which again humanizes the league, but it also gave us a chance to feature in a very emotional way the things that these players really cared about, right? And it allowed them to be very vulnerable and open and connect with people in a very different way.
To connect with with Gen Z, we focused on the things that the players loved around entertainment, like music, fashion and gaming. You may have noticed that we now, for example, we’re the only sports league that has a fashion editor, Kyle Smith, and he’s part of our marketing team. We brought that in. We have a lot of things that we’re doing to build that up. We have deep connections with all of our gaming partners, and then also a lot of the biggest creators in the world around gaming. We partner with them and bring them in. It took us years to really develop those partnerships and to earn the trust of these folks who really help us exponentially connect with fans in the US and around the world. Two of the biggest ones, IShowSpeed who has over 100 million followers, and then MrBeast — he’s massive now. We partnered with him early on. He had his first Super Bowl commercial with the NFL as an example. This year, our first game was streamed out of Brazil, and [MrBeast] was in charge of the NFL for a day in Brazil that first game this year. So we did lots of things with him and with some others, and we were earned their trust. We earned their partnership, and that’s really helped us see the world in a very different way. It’s helped us connect and build relationships and connect with our youth and important casual audiences.
A number of people have pointed out the flag football effect too, as the gentler form of football opens up youth competition to a wider range of players. Is that true in your experience?
We care about participation, and we want to make sure that we position flag as a legitimate sport. Then there’s no question about whether football was safe enough for young people to play because we’re offering not only tackle, but flag football as well. We really worked hard with the 32 teams to get flag football sanctioned as a girl’s varsity sport in high schools across the country, and we made significant progress in just a few short years. And now, with the NCAA now embracing flag football, we’re going to work and together to build a pro league with partners, and then ultimately the Olympics in ’28. These are really monumental shifts in the way that we think about football and football youth development, and it’s really helping us make the game more fun and interesting to a whole new fan base.
Now that it’s been a few years, what is the net gain for the NFL from the Taylor Swift effect? Your female viewership was already rising, but Swift’s influence must’ve been like rocket fuel?
She was particularly powerful and impactful with our very important segment of the 12-to-24 year old girls and women. That represents about 8% of our fan base, and a very important part of our fan base, because of course, they represent the future. And she grew that segment about 30% first year. So 8% of our fan base, she grew that 30%. I think she provided so many young women the opportunity to come in and feel comfortable wanting to be there and enjoying the game in a really authentic way.
How else are you trying to reach Gen Z and beyond?
It’s a natural extension of what we had already been doing for years with our influencers and creators. And those influencers and creators include some sports stars like Simone Biles, right? We’ve even brought them into our marketing group, and they were photographers on the sidelines. I know if you saw that, but Simone, Simone and Suni Lee were actually photographers for a game for our marketing group. So they get all this inside access work on the sidelines.
And then you’ve got Olivia Culpo who’s a very influential person. She’s the wife of [San Francisco 49ers player] Christian McCaffrey. And then Hailee Steinfeld [wife of Buffalo Bills’ quarterback Josh Allen], and [former NFL star] Jason Kelce’s wife, Kylie, so we really lifted up and partnered with not just the players themselves and some of these influencers and creators, but also some of the influencers and creators who were either wives or girlfriends of the players who really had a passion for the game and wanted to express themselves.
Bad Bunny just won the big prize of the night at Grammy Awards. What do you hope for out of the Halftime Show this year?
Bringing in Bad Bunny this year is already having a huge impact on a very important audience, both in the U.S. and internationally. And then the impact that we had with Kendrick Lamar last year in terms of video views and interest and engagement, far beyond the game itself, throughout the world. I’ve been in London doing deep research on insights on how to continue to position the NFL internationally, and they all talked about Kendrick Lamar and Bad Bunny, and the impact that some of these decisions have made. You have to be willing to not please everyone. There’s always going to be a segment of your fan base that is not 100% happy with some of your choices, but you have to be willing to take the risk, if you will, and to also believe in what it takes to grow your fan base and to grow the image of the NFL with very important young audiences. And what we’re finding is that some of our more mature audiences, that they actually love it, right? They start to sort of like get excited about as well, because it just makes the whole league and the image of the league feel more youthful and more energetic and more fun.